A Tale of Two Trees

The big tree in our living room is all decorated now.... my husband started with the lights last night and finished them this morning. Then I hung up all the ornaments. Well, not all of them, but all the blown-glass ones. I still have the Lenox ornaments in their box, and all the non-breakable ornaments in another big box. We don't need them for this tree because it's only eight feet tall..... so all the remaining tree ornaments don't get to come out and play this Christmas. Maybe next year.

We've been up since before dawn this morning.... my husband got up at 5:00 and started doing some computer work, and I got up at 6:00 and went out to some local yard sales. I didn't get anything for the cottage this time, but I did find a beautiful vintage glass bowl (Cambridge pattern) and it's now sitting in the center of our dining room table. I filled it with all the blown-glass ornaments that are in the shapes of fruits and vegetables and it looks beautiful. I had those ornaments all packed away in a separate box as well, so that was easy to do.

This afternoon, as I was just finishing up with our tree, putting the tree skirts around the bottom, and using teddy bears and Santas to create sort of a barrier to keep the cats from running full-tilt underneath the tree... the phone rang and it was our young Miss C. She had a Christmas surprise idea for her parents and she wanted to know if we could help her.

C's parents were going to a wedding this evening.... C's mom had told me about it last week, and wanted to know if C could come over here if she didn't want to stay alone. Of course, we said yes, but then I forgot all about this being the weekend for the wedding. When C called with her surprise idea, she asked me if we could go to her house, rather than her coming over here. I told her that would be fine, but I asked her why she wanted to change the plan.

C had her own plan.... while her parents were at the wedding, she wanted us to help her get their Christmas tree down from the attic (an artificial one) and all the ornament boxes. C wanted to know if we'd help her put the tree together and decorate it so she could surprise her parents when they got home. We were exhausted from our own day here, but my husband took it as a challenge and he said of course we'd do it. C called us when her parents left the house, and we went over there wearing Santa hats and holding a portable CD player and our collection of Christmas music.

When we got there, my husband and C went up in the attic for the boxes, the Christmas CDs started playing, and we set out to putting that tree together. What a job that was........ I told my husband that I'd never again complain about sweeping up needles and branches from a real live tree. I had forgotten just how ridiculous those fake trees can be...... and I had one for years and years when I lived in NY. Since I've been here in Texas, all we've had are real trees.

Anyway, we got the tree up and then we started with the decorations. At times, I felt like I was peeking into C's family history because there were so many ornaments there that C had made when she was little, and ornaments from her grandparents.... and there were even ornaments there that we had given C as gifts throughout the years.

We got to C's house at 5:30 this evening, and by 8:30 we were home. Her parents called her twice while we were there, but C didn't tell them we were there.... which was a mistake, because her parents called our home phone looking for us. When we got back here, I called her dad on his cell phone and told him not to worry, that all was well, and C was just "being a teenager."

Her mom and dad arrived home at 9:30 and were blown away by C's surprise. Her dad called here and told us that he couldn't believe we got everything down from the attic, the tree up and fully decorated, and the living room back to it's "normal" state. He said it takes him all day to do that decorating job with the tree and he hates it because it takes him all day. (Which is probably why C asked us to help her do it in the first place.)

I told my husband not to be surprised if C's parents tell us they have another wedding to go to next year at the end of November.